In many cases, medicines come in the form of pills or tablets. Often, neither of these forms meets clinical application requirements. In some cases, the sizes of the pills or tablets are too big to easily swallow in their whole form or too strong a dosage in some cases. For example, many patients such as children, some geriatrics, or other patients with particular diseases have difficulty swallowing whole pills or tablets. Hence it has been recognized that there is a need in these circumstances to crush pills or tablets of medicines into powder and then mix them with food, such as applesauce or jelly or add to a liquid in order to be easily swallowed or better digested. A number of “pill crushers” are currently available on the marketplace for both professional healthcare providers and the general population for personal use.
Conventional pill crushers rely on various operational mechanisms including the use of a mortar and pestle for grinding or impacting. Additionally, there have been various manual or motor driven devices to abrade, compress, fracture or crush the pills or tablets into either fragments or powder. However, all of the current commercial products have certain weaknesses in terms of reliability and efficacy of crushing pills or tablets, particularly for professional care providers which require heavy duty solutions.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,915,637, issued on Jun. 29, 1999 to J. Stuart Parsons, discloses a pill crusher whose operating mechanism is to convert the rotational movement of the handle into the “V” movement of the plates that is pivotally connected with the handle and the base for crushing pills between the plates and the anvil which is vertically fixed to the elongated base. A pouch for receiving the pills to be crushed has also been provided with the apparatus. In this prior apparatus, the crushing action from the “V” movement of the plates to the anvil is not sufficient to pulverize the pills into desired powders in a single action. Repetition is inevitable to get the desired powder. In addition, it is difficult to clean the crushing area during regular maintenances or if the pill pouches are accidentally caused to split. As a result, cross contamination of medicines is possible due to the difficulty in cleaning.
Therefore, with consideration to the previous discussion of the prior art, there is a need for a device that is compact and universal in design for crushing the various pills or tablets, and that operates in an easy but reliable, quiet, effort saving and efficient manner, and is easy to maintain and clean, and is suitable for both individual and institutional usage, and effectively reduces the likelihood of the contamination of the pills or tablets.
In summary, there is a need for a pill crusher to overcome most of the shortcomings of existing devices. There is a need for an apparatus that is easy to use, strong, reliable, and easy to clean and maintain.